My Dinner with Andre

The life of a playwright is tough.

It's not easy, as some people seem to think.

You work hard writing plays, and nobody puts them on.

You take up other lines of work to try to make a living...

I became an actor...

And people don't hire you.

So you just spend your days doing the errands of your trade.

Today I'd had to be up by 10:00 in the morning...

to make some important phone calls.

Then I'd gone to the stationery store to buy envelopes. Then to the Xerox shop.

There were dozens of things to do.

By 5:00 I'd finally made it to the post office...

and mailed off several copies of my plays...

meanwhile checking constantly with my answering service...

to see if my agent had called with any acting work.

In the morning, the mailbox had just been stuffed with bills.

What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to pay them?

After all, I was already doing my best.

I've lived in this city all my life.

I grew up on the Upper East Side...

and when I was 10 years old I was rich, I was an aristocrat...

riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort...

and all I thought about was art and music.

Now I'm 36, and all I think about is money.

It was now 7:00...

and I would have liked nothing better than to go home and have my girlfriend Debbie...

cook me a nice, delicious dinner.

But for the last several years our financial circumstances...

have forced Debbie to work three nights a week as a waitress.

After all, somebody had to bring in a little money.

So I was on my own.

But the worst thing of all was that I'd been trapped by an odd series of circumstances...

Into agreeing to have dinner with a man I'd been avoiding literally for years.

His name was André Gregory.

At one time he'd been a very close friend of mine...

as well as my most valued colleague in the theater.

In fact he was the man who had first discovered me...

and put one of my plays on the professional stage.

When I'd known André, he'd been at the height of his career as a theater director.

The amazing work he did with his company, the Manhattan Project...

had just stunned audiences throughout the world.

But then something had happened to André.

He dropped out of the theater. He sort of disappeared.

For months at a time, his family seemed only to know that he was traveling...

in some odd place like Tibet...

which was really weird because he loved his wife and children.

He never used to like to leave home at all.

Or else you'd hear that someone had met him at a party and he'd been telling people...

that he talked with trees or something like that.

Obviously, something terrible had happened to André.

The whole idea of meeting him made me very nervous.

I mean, I really wasn't up for that sort of thing.

I had problems of my own. I mean, I couldn't help André.

Was I supposed to be a doctor, or what?

- Hello. - Hello.

- Here you go. - Thank you.

- Yes, Sir. - Ah, sir, my name is Wallace Shawn.

I'm expected at the table of André Gregory.

That table will be a moment, sir.

If you like, you may have a drink at the bar.

- Good evening, sir. - Uh, could I have a club soda, please?

I'm sorry, sir. We only serve Source de Pavilion.

Oh, that'd be fine, thank you.

When I'd called André, and he'd suggested that we meet in this particular restaurant...

I'd been rather surprised, because André's taste used to be very ascetic...

even though people have always known that he had some money somewhere.

I mean, how the hell else could he have been flying off to Asia and so on...

and still have been supporting his family?

The reason I was meeting André was that an acquaintance of mine, George Grassfield...

had called me and just insisted that I had to see him.

Apparently, George had been walking his dog in an odd section of town the night before...

and he'd suddenly come upon André...

leaning against a crumbling old building and sobbing.

André had explained to George that he'd just been watching...

the Ingmar Bergman movie Autumn Sonata...

about 25 blocks away...

and he'd been seized by a fit of ungovernable crying...

when the character played by Ingrid Bergman had said...

"I could always live in my art, but never in my life."

Wally!

- Wow. - My God.

I remember, when I first started working with André's company...

I couldn't get over the way the actors would hug when they greeted each other.

"Wow. Now I'm really in the theater", I thought.

Well, you look terrific.

Well I feel terrible.

Good evening, sir. Nice to see you again.

Thank you. Good evening. Ah, I think I'll have a spritzer, if I could.

- Yes, sir. - Thank you.

I was feeling incredibly nervous.

I wasn't sure I could stick through an entire meal with him.

Great.

So we talked about this and that.

He fold me a few things about Jerzy Grotowski...

the great Polish theater director...

who was a friend and almost like a kind of a guru of André's.

He'd also dropped out of the theater.

Grotowski was a pretty unusual character himself.

At one time, he'd been quite fat, then he'd lost an incredible amount of weight...

and become very thin and grown a beard.

Your table is ready, if you feel like sitting down.

Yes. Thank you.

I was beginning to realize that the only way to make this evening bearable...

would be to ask André a few questions.

Asking questions always relaxes me.

In fact I sometimes think that my secret profession...

is that I'm a private investigator, a detective.

I always enjoy finding out about people.

Even if they're in absolute agony, I always find it very... interesting.

- By the way, is he still thin? - What?

Grotowski. Is he still thin?

Oh. Absolutely.

Oh, waiter? Uh, I think we can do without this.

- Yes, sir. - Thank you.

What about this one?

Seven swimming shrimp.

- Ready for your order? - Ah, yes.

Uh, the Galuska — How — How do you prepare that?

André seemed to know an awful lot about the menu.

- Dumpling with raisins, blanched almonds. - I didn't understand a word of it.

- Very good, I think. - Hmm.

No, I — I think I'll have the Cailles aux Raisin, the quail.

- Very good. - Oh, quails! I'll have that as well.

- Two. - Great. - Great!

And then I think, to begin with, the Terrine de Poissons.

- Yes. - What is that?

Uh, it's a sort of pate — Light, made of fish.

- Does it have bones in it? - No bones.

Perfectly safe.

Well, um — What is the, um, Bramborova Polévka?

It's a potato soup. It's quite delicious.

Oh, well, that's great. I'll have that.

- Thank you very kindly. - Thank you very much.

Well.

When was the last time that we saw each other?

So we talked for a while about my writing and my acting...

and about my girlfriend, Debbie.

And we talked about his wife, Chiquita, and his two children, Nicolas and Marina.

And I'd stayed back in New York.

Finally, I got around to asking him what he'd been up to in the last few years.

Oh, God. I'm just dying to hear it.

- Really? - Really.

Al first, he seemed a little reluctant to go into it...

so I just kept asking, and finally he started to answer.

...conference on paratheatrical work then.

And, uh, this must have been about five years ago...

and, uh, Grotowski and I were walking along Fifth Avenue and we were talking.

You see, he'd invited me to come to teach that summer in Poland.

You know, to teach a workshop to actors and directors and whatever.

And I had told him that I didn't want to come, because, really, I had nothing left to teach.

I had nothing left to say. I didn't know anything.

I couldn't teach anything.

Exercises meant nothing to me anymore.

Working on scenes from plays seemed ridiculous.

I - I didn't know what to do. I mean, I just couldn't do it.

So he said, "Why don't you tell me anything you'd like to have if you did a workshop for me."

"No matter how outrageous. And maybe I can give it to you."

So I said, "Well, if you could give me..."

"40 Jewish women who speak neither English nor French..."

"either women who've been in the theater for a long time and want to leave it..."

"but don't know why..."

"or young women who love the theater, but have never seen a theater they could love."

"And if these women could play the trumpet or the harp..."

"and if I could work in a forest, I'd come."

A week later, or two weeks later, he called me from Poland.

And he said, "Well, 40 Jewish women — That's a little hard to find."

But he said, "I do have 40 women. They all pretty much fit the definition."

And he said, "I also have some very interesting men..."

"But you don't have to work with them."

"These are all people who have in common the fact that they're questioning the theater."

"They don't all play the trumpet or the harp, but they all play a musical instrument."

"And none of them speak English."

And he'd found me a forest, Wally.

And the only inhabitants of this forest were some wild boar and a hermit.

So that was an offer I couldn't refuse.

I had to go.

So, I went to Poland, and it was this wonderful group of young men and women.

And the forest he had found us was absolutely magical.

You know, it was a huge forest.

I mean, the trees were so large...

that four or five people linking their arms couldn't get their arms around the trees.

So we were camped out beside the ruins of this tiny little castle...

and we would eat around this great stone slab that served as a sort of a table.

And our schedule was that usually we'd start work around sunset...

and then generally we'd work until about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning.

And then, because the Poles love to sing and dance...

we'd sing and dance until about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning.

And then we'd have our food, which was generally bread, jam, cheese and tea.

And then we'd sleep from around noon to sunset.

Now, technically, of course —.

Technically, the situation is a very interesting one...

because if you find yourself in a forest with a group of 40 people...

who don't speak your language, then all your moorings are gone.

What do you mean exactly?

Well, what we'd do is just sit there and wait...

for someone to have an impulse to do something.

Now, in a way that's — that's something like a theatrical improvisation.

I mean, you know, if you were a director working on a play by Chekhov...

you might have the actors playing the mother, the son and the uncle...

all sit around in a room and do a made-up scene that isn't in the play.